CommonHealth dissolves professional shop

Physician-focused agency Adient has been closed, with staff and accounts, including Ortho-McNeil business, shifted to other units within WPP's CommonHealth family.

“We no longer felt it necessary to have five professional agencies,” said Matt Giegerich, CommonHealth president and CEO. “It also made sense for us. If the last decade was [about] splintering out, the new model is about pulling together. Looking for synergy is the new mode.”

Clients were advised of the dissolution of the 15-year-old agency gradually starting last summer, after the departure of erstwhile president Guy Dess. David Chapman, who had run Adient in an acting capacity, has since shifted focus to his other role of managing partner responsible for the four remaining professional agencies: Ferguson, Carbon, Noesis and Altum.

Brands in Ortho-McNeil's antibiotic franchise, including ceftobiprole and doripenem, were switched to Carbon. Listerine, Rogaine and other OTC brands, which Adient had handled for Pfizer before their purchase by Johnson and Johnson this year, are now handled by Noesis.

CommonHealth also made some recent restructuring moves in its consumer business, taking two prior groups—mass media, DTC shop Quantum and relationship-marketing unit Exchange—and combining them into a single agency, EvoLogue. EvoLogue is now the core agency of the CommonHealth Consumer Group, which may spin out other conflict shops under the same umbrella, a source said.

Among other highlights, CommonHealth launched offices in Paris and London.

Recent account wins included Abbott's dyslipidemia brands Niaspan, Advicor, TriCor and the pipeline compound ABT-335. Abbott decided to consolidate the franchise within a single agency after acquiring Niaspan and Advicor from Kos last year. The Advicor account was the only one in the franchise that CommonHealth had worked on prior to the consolidation. ABT-335 is in Phase III clinical trials for raising HDL, or “good,” cholesterol and reducing triglycerides.